I say that to you not to be nasty but to help you. This is not a reflection of your work but the showreel itself.

It does not start for 20 seconds - who cares what your name is or what the model is called. I would place your name and email address on the bottom for the whole showreel (That way they know who u are and how to contact you with out looking for it)

The first model`s turn is very slow with the base taking up a 3rd of the screen - the wire part is a much better animation (Although you don`t show the head ????) and I would do the same sort of move for the first part but then you repeat the model with stills - not sure why - your just repeating yourself

The second model little bit more of a flow with this one but think you need to animated it opening and camera pan - not a still, the rest of that part I think is fine.

Last part I would cut the images from lord of the rings out (keep the first flaming eye though) - it is not needed. The text over the eye and the flame eye form lord of the rings is enough the image parts are dull and slid in places.

Any breakdown you want to show text for overlay them over the images and what the hell do you have 45 seconds for credits - leaving your email address on for only 9 seconds???. End with your name, email address and software skills only.

Show reels need
1) To show your best work
2) Be short

One last thing - not a fan of the music - made me feel sleepy (not helped by the pace of your showreel) but at least most watch them with the sound off.

Anyway sorry to be negative but as I said trying to help..... Here is a free tips video from escape studios in London on showreels - Plz note you may have to reg with them before you download.

there are some things in it that i don't like.
for the gundam model, its obvious that its just and ambient occlusion. so there is no need to say that its beauty pass and ambient occlusion overlay. I would also question why you have the poly count information in there. Its neither low nor high.
the Nintendo model is really basic, so no reason to have a wire frame. As its a basic model, i would say show off the texturing more. so perhaps do a turntable and frame the model better in camera.

EDIT: LOL! just watched that video. the example showreel is funny. There is a guy who just started at our work and he had the exact same style of shots. It works i guess.

Drop the motion graphics for the beginning. All you need is a title card with your name, and what you do. Recruiters tend to only look at the first ~30 seconds of your reel, because they have so many to get through. If all you've shown in that time is your name and title, they won't bother looking at the rest.

For your gundam, if you're going to go with the turntable, speed it up. Have it rotate a once or twice in a few seconds. You may want to do a few different camera angles for it as well, as seeing it from a distance doesn't help bring out the details you've put in. Also, I would highly recommend putting it in a pose. It's more dynamic and makes it interesting to look at. The way it is now, makes me not want to look at it because it's boring. Like tweetytunes mentioned, drop the stills, if you have more camera movements on your turntable, there's no need for stills. Also, I would texture it if I were you. It shows you have another skill set, and your model will look that much better.

For the nintendo controller, don't use a black background. Even just throwing up a ramp shader on a plane behind it will make it much better. Also, I really see no reason for you to show the inside of controller. There's nothing inside. If you modeled the electronics inside, then great! I'd love to see that. But what you have right now is not worth showing the inside of the controller.

For compositing, again I agree with tweetytunes. Drop the LoTR clips. It didn't seem to track with your eye as well as the previous images.

Music - don't need it. About 99% of the time, it'll just be muted anyway.

For your ending, move all the info to one slide. There's no reason to have all that broken up, and take that long as well.

Hope I wasn't too harsh. I know what a daunting task it can be to put a reel together, but hopefully we can steer you in the right direction, so you can make a kick ass reel.

I appreciate the crits guys, I dont feel they were harsh...considering I would like to get a job in the field I need people to tell me exactly what they think of my work. Thanks, will be working on a new show reel here soon, hopefully it will be better than this one.

There's nothing wrong with what you have to start off with, but it might not be enough for a professional reel so make more stuff, complicated stuff, and show off more technique in terms of modeling. Try pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, join a challenge or a group project to get the pressure up.

Knowing the kind of job you're going for it's easier to tailor your reel and keep it to the point. If you look at job ads from large companies like this one http://www.dneg.com/jobs/modeller_197.html make sure you fit the bill and display those skills as best you can in a reel, for example it's always nice to see pretty lighting and camera angles but if it's not relevant to the kind of job you want that time might be better spent constructing excellent UV maps as all these places get swamped with reels. We're not Pixar by any means, and we get reels from time to time that look like they were put together by 3-year olds to be brutally honest, so I don't even wanna think about what these guys go through. And I've had my head bitten off several times for trying to make helpful suggestions to these people, common sense and being polite takes you a long way as well in life

Another thing to look at is the competition, places like VFS and DAVE push their students pretty hard on reels, so if I was putting my reel together I'd look at their student reels and try producing similar things to what I liked in theirs as best I could.

The opening credits, a tad to long, but having your name, and contact details are essential, and have them at either end of the reel, if the recruiter gets to the end of the reel and are interested then it will save them rewinding to find out your details again. I do this on my reel, I believe Pixar like this approach too LOL.

Turntables are too slow, just do 200 frames for a 360 turntable, its not to slow or too fast, and should be enough for the eye to pick up on the model. Do an overlay with the same camera position from wire to AO to textures, its more interesting. But Showing the maps with UV layout is also a good idea, it will show you can model and texture. Try adjust your composition too. Also models with bases, a big no no, its not a Games Workshop Figurine etc, its a CG model readied for texture and animation, lose the base, have a wide ground plane or nothing at all. Also background color, do 50% grey, I picked this tip up from a VFX Director, it defines the model as not being finished. Everything is a grey area so to speak and isnt finsihed until its on screen. Its also a clean neautral color, that actually isnt garish like black or white can be.

Decide what you are as an artist. Are you are modeller/texture artist, or are you a compositer? What Im saying here is either lose the models on the reel or lose that eye plate at the end, with all the funk going on - I know what I would do.

music, have it if you want it, not everyone has the same tastes, but at the end of the day it will get turned off.

Yeah good point with the base in CG, I hate those things in the real world. Dave paints miniatures and we have them all over the place, the evil cat creatures like to play with them and place them in strategic locations to make you slip and break a leg or two.

Hey guys here is a rough cut of my new demo, took your in some of the advice given, I am going to rerender the gundam with a 50% gray background and add the uv map for both the boat and the controller, and may change how the controller is shown off. Any advice or crit would be appreciated.

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